The present invention relates in general to an email system for sending electronic messages over computer networks, and more specifically to an email system utilizing proxy email addresses to identify particular email relationships between the sender and recipient.
Conventional email systems are known. These systems operate on the assumption that each user of the email system has a private email address and all mail to be directed to an individual is addressed to this email address. This architecture, however, makes it difficult for an email recipient to organize incoming email messages into subject or organizational categories. Since all email for an individual is directed to a single email address, there is no way to automatically filter the mail unless the sender manually incorporates an identifier into the email message or header. The success of this method is thus dependent upon the response of the sender. A failure to manually include the requisite information defeats the intended functionality.
It is also an important security issue in the operation of an email system that the stated sender of the email message is the actual sender of the email. Any ability to xe2x80x9cspoofxe2x80x9d or disguise the sender compromises the integrity of the email system, which may have severe consequences. It is thus very desirable to eliminate or at least minimize any ability to present a false sender email address to a recipient.
It is also inherent in the conventional email architecture that the sender must know and provide the recipient""s private email address in order to send a message. Typically, for practical reasons the email address of a recipient is not necessarily intuitive, and may require the sender to look up the address in a directory. This, of course, requires an additional effort by the sender to send email, and it would be desirable to avoid any such necessity.
It would thus be desirable to provide an email system that facilitates the automatic filtering of email messages for a recipient so that the recipient can readily organize them according to a desired grouping. Furthermore, access to a recipient""s email mailbox could be denied if the sender did not adhere to the predetermined groupings of the recipient.
It would be further desirable to provide a convenient interface for sending email to a recipient without requiring specific knowledge of the recipient""s private email address.
The present invention advantageously provides for an email system that implements proxy email addresses to control access to a recipient""s email mailbox, and eliminates the requirement of a sender of email to know the recipient""s private email address when sending mail.
In one aspect of the invention, a user interface is presented to a user of the email system that corresponds to permissible email exchanges. The user interface that is presented may be particular to the individual user. The user interface may represent a defined relationship between the email participants identified in the user interface. Email recipients may be included in multiple, user interfaces corresponding to different roles an individual may hold. For example, the user interface may be implemented in a hierarchical tree structure that identifies all the members of a work project, and facilitates email exchanges between the members of the project. Since the project members of one project may also be members of a second project, these individuals will be included in two user interfaces or two hierarchical trees for sending email to other project members.
In a further aspect of the invention, email exchanges are performed through a proxy email address to identify the recipient of the email. The proxy email address corresponds to the particular user interface that identifies the email exchange, and may be different for different user interfaces.
In a yet further aspect of the invention, the proxy email address is converted to the recipient""s private email address prior to delivering the email message to the recipient. Additional information may be added to the email message by the email system that is related to the proxy address used to initiate the email exchange. The additional information related to the proxy email address provides an indication to the recipient of the email""s subject or general focus.
In a still further aspect of the invention, the email system may substitute a proxy email address as the return address for a sender of email in order to identify the subject matter or focus of the reply.
In a further aspect of the invention, the ability to exchange email relating to a certain matter may be eliminated by deleting the proxy email address, and thus the invention provides a convenient and efficient manner of restricting the email exchange process.
In a yet further aspect of the invention, the security of the sender and recipient email addresses is enhanced since the email system generates the sender and recipient email addresses, and thus minimizes the ability to xe2x80x9cspoofxe2x80x9d or present a false email address to the recipient